Gidget and TJ Hooker Star Passes Away at 88

James Darren, the actor who ignited the 1960s surfing craze through his role as a charismatic beach boy in the hit film Gidget, has died at the age of 88, his family has confirmed.

Darren passed away peacefully in his sleep at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for heart problems in the cardiac unit.

His son, Jim Moret, shared with The Hollywood Reporter that the actor initially went to the hospital for an aortic valve replacement but was deemed too weak for surgery. Although Darren was discharged and sent home, he was later readmitted as his health deteriorated.

“I always thought he would pull through,” Moret told reporters. “Because he was so cool. He was always cool.”

Throughout his extensive career, Darren acted, sang, and built a successful behind-the-scenes career as a television director, directing episodes of notable series such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place. In the 1980s, he was Officer Jim Corrigan on the television cop show T.J. Hooker.

However, to young movie fans of the late 1950s, Darren is best remembered as Moondoggie, the dark-haired surfer boy in the 1959 smash hit Gidget. Sandra Dee starred as the title character, a Southern Californian who hits the beach and eventually falls in love with Moondoggie.

“I was in love with Sandra,” Darren later recalled. “I thought that she was absolutely perfect as Gidget. She had tremendous charm.”

The film was based on a novel by Frederick Kohner, who wrote about his own teenage daughter. It spurred significant interest in surfing, influencing pop music, slang, and fashion.

Darren’s success with teen fans led to a recording contract. Two of his singles, “Goodbye Cruel World” and “Her Royal Majesty,” reached the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. “Goodbye Cruel World” also appeared in Steven Spielberg’s 2022 semi-autobiographical film, The Fabelmans.

Darren was the only Gidget cast member to appear in both sequels, 1961’s Gidget Goes Hawaiian and 1963’s Gidget Goes to Rome. Dee was replaced by Deborah Walley in the second film and Cindy Carol in the third.

“They had me under contract; I was a prisoner,” Darren told Entertainment Weekly in 2004. “But with those lovely young ladies, it was the best prison I think I’ll ever be in.”

As a contract player at Columbia Studios, Darren appeared in adult-marketed films, too, including Phil Karlson’s noir The Brothers Rico, Richard Quine’s military comedy Operation Madball, and J. Lee Thompson’s war action film The Guns of Navarone.

By the 1960s, when Darren appeared in For Those Who Think Young and The Lively Set, his big-screen acting career was winding down. Post-1960s, he appeared in a handful of movies, with his last appearance being in the 2017 comedy-drama Lucky, directed by John Carroll Lynch.

Darren stayed active on television, starring in the sci-fi show The Time Tunnel in the late 1960s, and taking on guest spots and small recurring roles in TV shows like The Love Boat, Hawaii Five-O, and Fantasy Island.

Darren was a series regular for four seasons of the William Shatner-starring T.J. Hooker in the 1980s. While on the show, he noticed that no director was listed for an upcoming sequence. He asked if he could try his hand at it.

“When it was shown, I got several offers to direct,” he told the New York Daily News. “Soon I was getting so many offers to direct, I kind of gave up acting and singing.”

For nearly two years, Darren directed episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger, Hunter, Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210 among other series. He returned to acting in the 1990s with small roles in Melrose Place and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Darren, born James Ercolani in 1936, grew up in South Philadelphia. A naturally gifted singer, he was performing at local nightclubs by age 14. “From the age of five or six, I knew I wanted to be an entertainer, or famous maybe,” he said in a 2003 interview, noting that luminaries such as Eddie Fisher and Al Martino lived nearby. “[It was] a real neighborhood,” he said. “It made you feel you could be successful, too.”

Darren caught a break when he went to New York for headshots and the photographer’s office put him in touch with a talent scout, leading to his signing by Columbia Pictures. After a few small roles, his fan mail at the studio was second only to Vertigo star Kim Novak’s. “The studio now feels that the young man is ready to hit the jackpot,” Columbia said.

Darren married his first wife, Gloria Terlitsky, in 1955. The couple had a son, James Jr., but divorced by 1958. James was later adopted by Terlitsky’s third husband and is now known as US news anchor Jim Moret.

Two years after his divorce from Terlitsky, Darren married Evy Norland, the Danish entry in the Miss Universe contest. They had two sons, Christian and Anthony.

The Gidget star was also godfather to Nancy Sinatra’s daughter, A.J. Lambert, having starred alongside Sinatra in Leslie H. Martinson’s 1964 comedy, For Those Who Think Young.

Additional reporting by Agencies

Source: The Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly, New York Daily News